YouTube cuts business ties with Logan Paul after video furore

YouTube has taken further action against Logan Paul in the wake of his controversial video.

The fallout from the ‘suicide forest’ video uploaded by social media figure Logan Paul continues to rumble on.

The video posted by Paul on 31 December caused widespread outrage due to the crass nature in which he and his companions dealt with finding a suicide victim in a Japanese forest.

The video was originally removed by Paul himself a day after it was posted but, by that point, it had already garnered millions of views. 11 days after the video was posted, YouTube has finally taken steps to discipline Paul for his actions.

Logan Paul punished

Paul has been removed from Google Preferred, a premier advertising service offering brands access to top YouTubers, and he will not be featured on the fourth season of the original YouTube series Foursome. He also had some projects in the pipeline with YouTube Originals but the company has placed these on hold.

Paul will still be able to run advertisements on his channel, but he will likely see lower CPMs than if he had remained on the Google Preferred roster.

CPM (or cost per mille) denotes the price of 1,000 advertisement impressions on a single video. For example, if an advertiser pays $10 CPM, a video with 10,000 views will earn $100.

The sequel to YouTube movie The Thinning had begun filming with Paul in November of last year, and it is not yet clear what its fate is.

YouTube responds to outcry

The push from YouTube comes after a statement on the company’s Twitter page, posted on 9 January. YouTube expressed that it was upset about the video, saying: “Suicide is not a joke, nor should it ever be a driving force for views.”

Suicide is not a joke, nor should it ever be a driving force for views. As Anna Akana put it perfectly: "That body was a person someone loved. You do not walk into a suicide forest with a camera and claim mental health awareness."

It continued: “We know that the actions of one creator can affect the entire community, so we’ll have more to share soon on steps we’re taking to ensure a video like this is never circulated again.”

A petition for Paul’s YouTube channel to be deleted has received hundreds of thousands of signatures. He has not posted since his apology video last week, and stated that he would be taking a break following the controversy.